[Lexicog] Who owns your lexicon?

[lingamish7]

Here in Mozambique we have a number of linguists that have been
collecting words sporadically over the last ten years or so.  Some of
them have fair-sized databases of 1,000 to 3,000 entries.  In one case
they are approaching the 10,000 entry mark.  In most cases they have
been sitting on this data and never publishing it.  I'm curious about
what approach we should take to that data.  Is it "owned" by NGO? 
Should they be making it freely available to the language community
that uses that language?

And in another situation, we hope to lead a country-wide lexicography
project, producing basic word lists for the major Mozambican languages
to be used in bilingual education.  Speakers of the various languages
will probably be coming from a lot of contexts: work-for-hire,
full-time employees of NGO's, and government representatives from the
department of education.  Coming out of that project we should see ten
or so lexical databases, but with such a diverse group of participants
who will own the data?

My current standpoint is that the data will be freely shareable but
any publications will be copyright of the organization that produces them.

I'd appreciate any direction on this topic as it relates to long-term
data collection by an expat as well as the country-wide project I
described.

David Ker
SIL Mozambique




 
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